How long have Catholics kept Bibles in their homes

[Khalid]

I think it is a bit different then that. People were permitted to read the Bible. If this were not true, then the Douey Bible would never have been commissioned. I, however, have heard people claim that when they were growing up the Bible was considered so sacred that only the Priest could read it. To me this seems more like a regional/ cultural thing.

What’s funny is that people were allowed to own the Bible, but the imprimatur was reversed - the individual had to be licensed to read the Bible, not the Bible licensed to be read by Catholics. Such as to determine was the man looking to wrest the words of scripture to his own destruction, was he mature in his faith, was he literate, was he likely to gain benefit from reading the Bible, or to use it to support heresy?

 

[johnthebaptist1]

What’s funny is that people were allowed to own the Bible, but the imprimatur was reversed - the individual had to be licensed to read the Bible, not the Bible licensed to be read by Catholics. Such as to determine was the man looking to wrest the words of scripture to his own destruction, was he mature in his faith, was he literate, was he likely to gain benefit from reading the Bible, or to use it to support heresy?

I beleive that when we read the Bible,we fine out more what our Heavanly father expects of us, threw the teaching of his son Jesus while he was here on earth. For in the Gospel reading, which is taken from the Bible, we fine the truth.

 

[sulkow82]

What’s funny is that people were allowed to own the Bible, but the imprimatur was reversed - the individual had to be licensed to read the Bible, not the Bible licensed to be read by Catholics.

The reason I said that I think it is a “a regional thing,” is I am presently living in Hawaii and I have met people here (at Church events) who said that they personally were forbidden to read the Bible because only a Priest could do that. OTOH, I have an old Douey Rhimes Bible which my mom purchased (in Buffalo) the year I was born (1968).

However, she also said that while in grade school (I think) she was not permitted to read the Bible but was taught a specific set of stories from the Bible.

Concerning Catholics being “certified” to read the Bible, how was that administered? The people I was talking with down here suggested that (when they were growing up before 1950) only priests were permitted to read the Bible (no “work around” by certification). Was the requirement for a certification decreed by the Vatican?

 

[aicirt]

The Jews’ oldest scrolls are actually from 950-1010 AD (the Aleppo [960 AD] and Leningrad [1008-9 AD] Codices) unless one counts the fragments of the sectarian Essenes at Qumran. The oldest Bibles - both Old and New Testaments, whether together or separately - are all Greek (Septuagint) translations - the Codices Alexandrinus, Vaticanus, and Sinaiticus. And then it’s all Greek OT and Greek NT, along with other vernacular (Latin, Slavonic, etc.) translations for another 600 years until the first Hebrew shows up - the Leningrad Codex, which is the basis for the modern Masoretic text and the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, the source of modern Old Testaments.

There’s a reason I mainly use translations from the Vulgate and the Septuagint(s) itself - the Vulgate is more ancient than the modern Hebrew, and the LXX older than the Vulgate! The Dead Sea Scrolls (the oldest Hebrew we have, very fragmentary, from the Essenes at Qumran) often agree with the LXX against the modern, mediaeval Leningrad Codex Hebrew.

I was counting the fragments of the scrolls. These certainly were not the only ones now lost to man but at the time used by the Jews. Even ancient Jews were very mindful of education and I’ve read that they were to live where they could gather together and read and discuss the Torah etc.

 

[aicirt]

The reason I said that I think it is a “a regional thing,” is I am presently living in Hawaii and I have met people here (at Church events) who said that they personally were forbidden to read the Bible because only a Priest could do that. OTOH, I have an old Douey Rhimes Bible which my mom purchased (in Buffalo) the year I was born (1968).

However, she also said that while in grade school (I think) she was not permitted to read the Bible but was taught a specific set of stories from the Bible.

Concerning Catholics being “certified” to read the Bible, how was that administered? The people I was talking with down here suggested that (when they were growing up before 1950) only priests were permitted to read the Bible (no “work around” by certification). Was the requirement for a certification decreed by the Vatican?

If such a “license” existed, I think it was because the Church feared the reprecussions of private interpertation. Also the majority of people had a limited education. They would have had difficulty reading the Bible which was written in a very formal language. My grandparents had a third and fifth grade education. My great-grandmother was the only one who knew how to read in her neighborhood. The immigrants would come to her to read their letters from home and ask her to write letters back to them. In the early 50s, we had our own children’s Bibles in parochial school.

 

[Sherry_G]

My great grandfather was born right after the civil war. He had a stong Catholic faith and a bible. My grandmother was born in 1895, and I have a photo of her with her parents and her brother dressed in finery, riding on donkeys in dowtown Cincinnati. They had a bible, my great grandfather was literate, was a city solicitor in local politics. My grandma was a devout Catholic. The Church was in the center of their lives, and they passed on their faith to the next generations. Bible owning and reading was common enough. Those who like to report otherwise are those who would prefer their own interpretatioin of scripture as being more valid IMHO. Lots of myths have been perpetuated about Catholicism by all the various protestants as if they have a lock somehow on faith by owning the very book that was canonized by the Church.

 

[Bookcat]

Well…it started in the First Century …for those who could get some hand written copies of some of the books…

 

[Khalid]

The reason I said that I think it is a “a regional thing,” is I am presently living in Hawaii and I have met people here (at Church events) who said that they personally were forbidden to read the Bible because only a Priest could do that. OTOH, I have an old Douey Rhimes Bible which my mom purchased (in Buffalo) the year I was born (1968).

However, she also said that while in grade school (I think) she was not permitted to read the Bible but was taught a specific set of stories from the Bible.

Concerning Catholics being “certified” to read the Bible, how was that administered? The people I was talking with down here suggested that (when they were growing up before 1950) only priests were permitted to read the Bible (no “work around” by certification). Was the requirement for a certification decreed by the Vatican?

As far as I remember, the certification was hundreds of years ago at the soonest. I believe a parish priest would talk to the man interested (maybe consult with his superior?), and if he found him worthy, literate, and unlikely to wrest the words of Scripture to his own destruction, issue him a license to read the Bible in either Latin or approved vernacular (that is, not corrupted Protestant) translation. If memory serves, this was instituted by Trent. In effect, evaluating the spiritual maturity of the individual, instead of the Bible being certified to be read by all, even those who would wrest the best translations to their own destruction (this is why all Catholic Bibles, to gain the imprimatur, have always been required to be printed “with at least minimal explanatory notes on difficult passages that are often used by heretics”, re-confirmed by later councils and many encyclicals - even that has been wrested to destruction today, with the kinds of blasphemous, “damaging to faith and morals” annotation in the New American Bible). The system (if it ever existed) was done away with by the time of widespread availability of books and literacy, sometime in the 18th century (i.e. there is no way even the 3x-grandfather of the oldest living man today would have been subject to it), in favor of licensing books instead.

However, I have no source for this assertion, can find no source for it, and can not remember where I read it, so it may be only an urban legend or even anti-Catholic propaganda. I have attempted to source it on the internet, but, for the supposed Canon of Trent that I remember: "That if any one shall dare to read or keep in his possession that book, without such a license, he shall not receive absolution till he has given it up to his ordinary." (eidetic memory) - I can find no sources except for anti-Catholic ones, so it may be nothing but a rumor.

I didn’t think it was anti-Catholic - I like the idea of licensing the individual to read the Bible instead of the other way around, because then even if a bad Bible makes its way in to his hands, it’s less likely to damage his faith or morals, whereas if some approved Bibles make it in to the hands of a halfway-educated man today, it may. (I say halfway-educated, as some individuals are too dense to even take notice of, exception to, or outrage at the kinds of notes in the NAB, if they even read them: it requires a modicum of skill to be able to understand them enough to be scandalized, and a good proficiency to understand them well enough in order to re-interpret them so as to not be scandalized.)

 

[Khalid]

If such a “license” existed, I think it was because the Church feared the reprecussions of private interpertation.

Exactly, that was the point I was making - the individual license is a good idea, to screen those who will honestly think with the mind of the Church and not look for any reason, however flimsy, to support the assertions of the proof-texting Protestant neighbors, and also helps guard against scandal when bad Bibles (NAB, NJB) that are nonetheless granted imprimatur are read by not only the spiritually immature, but those who are not learned in the arts of Biblical criticism (as the annotation in those Bibles and the effect it has has little to do with spiritual maturity, but merely with strength of learning in a specific discipline).